New players will initially spawn within a small area surrounding the world spawn point when the server is not in adventure mode. This area is 20×20 blocks by default, but can be changed by the spawnRadius gamerule in both single and multiplayer. Upon death, the player will then respawn within this area unless they have had their individual spawn point changed.

When spawning, the player will be placed upon the highest block of the matching X and Z location that they have spawned at, even if this would set the player above the maximum build height. This area will not consider the existence of a block to spawn on, which can result in players spawning above the Void if there are no blocks at that X and Z location.

The world spawn point also determines the center of the permanently loaded spawn chunks.

The world spawn point itself can be changed using the /setworldspawn command.

When the server's settings set the default game mode to adventure mode (using the server.properties), then the normal spawning mechanic is ignored and players are spawned directly on the world spawn. This includes the X, Y and Z coordinates, even if there is no block there and even if there are blocks above it.

If the Y coordinate is not a valid spawning area then the server looks up until it finds one, at most players can spawn at Y=256. If there is space to spawn but it is in the middle of the air, the player will spawn in the middle of the air, even falling into the void if there is a hole.

The individual spawn point of the player can be changed by sleeping in a bed or using the /spawnpoint command. If the individual spawning area of the player is obstructed upon their death, they will be forced to respawn at the world spawn.

Sleeping in a bed will allow for leniency in obstruction, in that the player will attempt to respawn on other blocks near the bed if the original point becomes blocked. If the spawn point set via /spawnpoint becomes obstructed, the player will not be given this leniency in respawning.

A cow that generated with the map inside a tree's leaves and could not escape, a common sight in forested hill areas.

Approximately one in ten newly generated chunks will contain mobs, usually in packs of up to four of the same species. They will always spawn on the highest available block in a column. For an animal to spawn on it, this block must be opaque and the two blocks above it must be transparent. The block does not need to be a grass block nor does it need to be illuminated as it does with mob spawning.

Animals do not spawn in desert, beach or ocean biomes, with the exception of rabbits and squid, and only mooshrooms will spawn in mushroom island biomes. Rabbits can only spawn in desert, ice plains, taiga, mega taiga, and cold taiga biomes, and mooshrooms can only spawn in mushroom island biomes.

Randomness for animal spawning is derived from the world seed, which means that worlds with the same seed will generate chunks with the same animals in the same places.

Mobs are broadly divided into four categories: hostile, friendly, water (i.e. squid) and ambient (i.e. bat). Hostile mobs have a spawning cycle once every game tick (1⁄20 of a second). Friendly and water mobs have only one spawning cycle every 400 ticks (20 seconds). Because of this, where conditions permit spawning, hostile mobs spawn frequently, but passive mobs (ie: animals) spawn very rarely. Most animals spawn within chunks when they are generated.

Mobs spawn naturally within a square group of chunks centered on the player, 15×15 chunks (240×240 blocks). When there are multiple players, mobs can spawn within the given distance of any of them. However, hostile mobs (and some others) that move farther than 128 blocks from the nearest player will soon despawn, so the mob spawning area is more-or-less limited to spheres with a radius of 128 blocks, centered at each player. In multiplayer, mob caps are shared by all players, no matter where they are.

Mob caps are directly proportional to the total number of chunks eligible for spawning. To calculate the cap, the spawning area is expanded by one chunk in every direction (so the default gives 17×17 chunks), then the total number of chunks is plugged into the following formula:

mobCap = constant * chunks / 289

Each mob category has a separate cap and a different constant in the formula:

Hostile = 70
Passive = 10
Ambient (Bats) = 15
Water (Squids) = 5

In single player mode, there are always 289 chunks in range so the caps above are used. In multiplayer, chunks that are in range of multiple players are only counted once. So the more spread out the players are, the more chunks will be covered and the higher the caps will be.

The amount of mobs is checked once at the beginning of each spawning cycle against the cap. If the number of living mobs in a category is over its cap, the entire spawning cycle for that category is skipped. The area checked for mobs is the same as the area used for calculating the mob cap, which is the spawning area expanded by one chunk in every direction.

Example of a mob pack spawning. The 41×1×41 spawning area is shaded blue (not to scale). The yellow figures represent the actual positions that mobs could spawn in after checking the environment. Note that the mobs can spawn inside torch and ladder blocks. But they can't spawn on top of glass because it's not opaque. The red cube is the center of the pack.

Requirements for the spawning location of individual mobs

For each spawning cycle, one attempt is made to spawn a pack of mobs in each eligible chunk. A random location in the chunk is chosen to be the center point of the pack. For the pack to spawn at all, the center block must be non-opaque, or must not fill its entire cube, or must be powered.

If the pack location is suitable, up to 12 attempts are made to spawn up to a pack, which is 8 wolves, 1 ghast, 3 rabbits, or 4 of any other mob. The pack is spawned within a 41×1×41 (that's a 41×41 square that is one block high) area centered at the initial block. Mobs will spawn with the lowest part of their body inside this area. For each spawn attempt, a block location within the pack area is chosen at random. Though the pack area extends 21 blocks out from the center, the random location is heavily skewed toward the center of the pack. Approximately 85% of spawns will be within 5 blocks of the pack center, and 99% within 10 blocks of the center.

All mobs within a pack are the same species. The species for the entire pack is chosen randomly from those eligible to spawn at the location of the first spawn attempt in the pack:

If all of these conditions are met then the mob is spawned. The pack
is complete when 4 mobs have spawned (or 8 wolves, or 1 ghast, or 3 rabbits), or 12 attempts have been made, whichever comes first. The exception(s) to these rules is the ender dragon or the wither.

Due to the general block checks, all mobs besides squids and guardians must spawn on top of an opaque block with at least two blocks of headroom, even ghasts, etc. However, short mobs can spawn in a one block high space if the block above is transparent, like a glass block or piston.

Individual mobs and packs can spawn inside signs, and other blocks that have no collision boxes. However, they cannot spawn on any type of rails or on pressure plates.

Similarly, buildings surrounded by air will spawn more mobs inside than underground rooms because packs that spawn outside of the building can spawn mobs inside it.

The mob caps tend to be reached in seconds. Because of this, mobs can be funneled into a spawning room by preventing them from spawning outside of it.

The caps also mean that the faster mobs are killed, the faster they will spawn.

Because the caps are only checked at the beginning of a spawn cycle, they can be dramatically exceeded when a large number of mobs spawn in a single cycle. This happens often with squid, which have a fairly low cap (5 in single player) but can spawn in the hundreds in a single cycle, in an area with lots of water.

If the player's view distance or the server view distance in multiplayer is at 9 or below, mob spawning is severely reduced (or they despawn too quickly), and may result in the player encountering no mobs at all. Set the view distance to 10 or higher to ensure mobs spawn correctly.

Cows, chickens, pigs, sheep, mooshrooms, villagers, ocelots, wolves, horses, donkeys, and rabbits can breed. All of these require a player to breed them except for villagers.

A thrown egg has a 1 in 8 chance of spawning a chicken, and an additional 1 in 32 chance of spawning 4 chickens from a single egg, so there is a total of 1 in 256 chance for a single thrown egg to spawn 4 chickens.

A snow golem, iron golem, or wither can be made to spawn if a player builds the proper structure out of blocks. Iron golems can also spawn in sufficiently populous villages. See their respective pages for full details.

A monster egg will spawn a silverfish if broken, or if a nearby silverfish is attacked.

Zombies can spawn in large groups in villages at midnight ignoring most of the usual restrictions, forming a siege. It could even happen in mushroom biomes or if /gamerule doMobSpawning is false. The game will make 10 attempts to spawn a zombie within a 17x7x17 area centered on a block within the village's cylindrical radius, at the same Y level as the village center.

Monsters (other than converting zombie villagers), bats, squid, ocelots (after having existed for over 2400 ticks), chickens from Chicken Jockeys, and hostile or untamed wolves[verify] can cease to exist, or "despawn", under certain conditions:

A mob that has had no player within 32 blocks of it for more than 30 seconds has a 1 in 800 chance of despawning on each game tick (1/20th of a second), which is a 2.47% chance per second. Therefore, the half-life of monsters not within 32 blocks of a player is 27.73 seconds (after the initial 30 seconds have elapsed).

A mob will immediately despawn if there is no player within 128 blocks of it. Note that this is a Euclidean sphere, not a cylinder from map top to bottom and not a taxicab sphere (which is more like an octahedron). Example: A mob at 0/y/0 will remain at least 30 seconds (as above) if the player moves to 65/y/65 (real distance 91.9), but despawns immediately if the player moves to 91/y/91 (real distance 128.7).

All hostile mobs (including those that are holding items) in a world will despawn if the difficulty is set to Peaceful, regardless as to where the player is positioned in the world.

In multiplayer, despawning does not occur while there are no players in the game.

A monster which has been named with a name tag will not despawn. However, one created from a renamed spawn egg will despawn as normal.

If a monster is holding any items or wearing any armor that was given by a player or picked up from the ground, it will not despawn.

Chickens that originally spawned as chicken jockeys follow zombie despawn rules, rather than chicken despawn rules. In other words, they will despawn.

Previously, spawn was determined by light level rather than the current chunk properties. This was no longer the case in 1.0.0. In a Beta world, hostile mobs would spawn in light level 7 or lower while friendly mobs would spawn in light levels 9 or higher. Because of this, hostile mobs had a slight chance of spawning even though it was light due to them spawning in the air where there was little light. If you had a lot of torches down, go down to your mine, then return, you would have a tendency to find your house having some cows, pigs, chickens or sheep running about.

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